COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Barack Obama is Just Not That Bright

George Bush was never quite as dumb as the media portrayed. Obama is not even close to being as smart as the tingle of media legs hoped him to be.

I do have to chuckle when I think of the collective of stupid and naive who fell for his eloquence.

An eloquent Afro-American is very intoxicating to the inclusive generation.

Obama has not worn well. He could have done a lot of good. He hasn't. He blew it and given the opportunity handed to him as the being-there president, one could safely question, just who is the stupid one?

Obama also wants the Republicans (whites) to sit in the back of the bus. That is not very smart either and is going toxic for him. Actually Obama has been using that little poke in the eye for some time as this video clip shows:



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Barack Obama echoes anti-Americanism of Europe in calling voters stupid

President Obama and his fellow Democrats are mocking Republicans and the Tea Party as stupid. But they could be the ones who look foolish on election day.

Barack Obama is gambling that voters will remember why they once backed him as he tries to rally the Democratic campaign.
Barack Obama speaks to his audience at a campaign rally in Las Vegas Photo: EPA

So what is the closing argument of Barack Obama's Democrats before next Tuesday's midterm elections? The President is no longer the self-proclaimed "hope-monger" of 2008, who vaingloriously declared that his vanquishing Hillary Clinton marked "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal".

He has stopped patting voters on the back for choosing, by voting for him, to listen not to their doubts or fears but to their "greatest hopes and highest aspirations". Instead, he is berating Americans (most of whom now do not believe he deserves a second term) for not being able to "think clearly" because they're "scared".

Having failed to change Washington or, as he promised that night in St Paul, Minnesota in June 2008, to provide "good jobs to the jobless" (unemployment was 7.7 per cent when he took office and is 9.6 per cent now), Obama is changing tack.

Boiled down, the new Obama message to Americans is: you're too stupid to overcome your fears. To be fair, it's not entirely new. During the 2008 campaign, Obama was caught on tape at a San Francisco fund-raiser saying it was not surprising that voters facing economic hardship "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them".

At a fund-raiser in Massachusetts this month, Obama spoke of Democrats having "facts and science and argument" on their side. As opposed, presumably, to the lies, superstition and prejudice that Republicans rely on.

This year, Democrats have embraced with gusto the notion that Republicans, and by extension anyone thinking of voting for them, are dimwits. Their mirth over the likes of Tea Party figures like Christine O'Donnell, the former anti-masturbation activist who once she had "dabbled" in witchcraft and is now a no-hoper Senate candidate in Delaware, seems to know no bounds.

The most chortling of all about the populist Tea Party and its anti-tax, anti-government uprising against the Republican establishment can be found on the shows of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, the edgy liberal satirists on Comedy Central. Mocking Republican candidates last week, Stewart declared the midterm elections as "the best chance ever for a bowl of fresh fruit" to be elected.

Three days before the elections, Stewart will hold a "Rally to Restore Sanity" in Washington on the same day as Colbert, who adopts the character of a Right-wing talk show host, leads a "March to Keep Fear Alive". The thinly-disguised message: Republicans are crazies who trade on fear.

In choosing California and Massachusetts, two of the most liberal states in the union, to demean ordinary Americans during election campaigns, Obama did not display a whole lot of his much-vaunted intelligence. But Obama's decision to plug Stewart's rally approvingly and appear on his show three days beforehand is even more foolish.

In the 1990s, Democrats managed to get away from their image as "eggheads" in the 1950s or "pointy-headed liberals" in the 1970s. Bill Clinton spoke like a Good Ol' Boy from the Deep South, ate junk food and enjoyed trashy women. He was clever, but he did not look down on people.

Obama, by contrast, has become a parody of the Ivy League liberal smugly content with his own intellectual superiority and pitying the poor idiots who disagree with him. It is an approach that shares much with the default anti-Americanism of British and European elites, who love to mock the United States as a country full of gun-toting, bible-clutching morons.

David Cameron has made nods to this sniffy condescension, speaking of the Sarah Palin phenomenon as being "hard for us to understand" (how about giving it a go, Dave?) and describing American conservatism, inaccurately, as moving in a "very culture war direction". This might be part of the reason why he seems to have hit it off with Obama.

The problem for Obama and the Democrats is that belittling the Tea Party movement, which is taking hold of much of Middle America, merely fuels the popular sense that the party in power is out of touch. It also highlights the reluctance of Obama and the Democrats to discuss the Wall Street bail-out, economic stimulus and health care bills because they know they are not vote winners.

Joining the Europeans in mocking ordinary Americans for their supposed idiocy may play well at big-dollar fund-raisers. In adopting this as a political strategy, however, the Democrats could be the ones who end up looking stupid.

9 comments:

  1. They'll never look as stupid as we look for electing them.

    That said, however, this is a Great video. Teachers Gone Wild

    They use mostly small words, and stuff. Q will enjoy it, I think.

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  2. “We’re number 1!”

    “Here is a little dose of reality about where we actually rank today,” says Vest: sixth in global innovation-based competitiveness, but 40th in rate of change over the last decade; 11th among industrialized nations in the fraction of 25- to 34-year-olds who have graduated from high school; 16th in college completion rate; 22nd in broadband Internet access; 24th in life expectancy at birth; 27th among developed nations in the proportion of college students receiving degrees in science or engineering; 48th in quality of K-12 math and science education; and 29th in the number of mobile phones per 100 people.

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  3. Let's spend our time and energy and focus on Juan Williams.

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  4. Reminiscent of President Carter, without the sweater.

    Though the fat lady is not even begun to warm up on Obama's term in office, yet.

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  5. Rufus, that is just too good. Hold your fire till I put it up, in about one minute.

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  6. But we rank number one, in the percentage of the whirled population, 3%, consuming and producing the most stuff, around 23%.

    No where else comes close.

    The question is, can this imbalance continue?

    If so, how?

    Personally, I do not see how the imbalance can continue in the face of the economic and political liberalization in the rest of the whirled. Especially as it relates to China.

    Coupled with the diminishing raw material resources available, rare earths and oil come first to mind, the challenge of maintaining our post-WWII economic dominance becomes even more daunting.

    While we fritter our own blood and treasure away, trying to secure the old British Empire's footprint in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.

    When we should be internalizing our energies, we are spending them on needless foreign adventures.

    Trips without purpose.

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  7. .
    OK. So the Fed has implied it is set for some more quantitative easing. Will it happen on November 3? If so, how much? Gradual or front loaded?

    Many assume at least half a trillion is already baked into the market. If that's true, what if the Fed disappoints? Even if they don't disappoint, is it a case of buy in anticipation and sell on the news?

    If a correction comes it would probably be a good thing given the run up in September. But how big a correction will it be?

    I've been pulling some money out of the market over the last couple days, should I do more in anticipation of a sell-off next week?

    .

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  8. Q, no living human being knows. Good Luck.

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  9. .
    Q, no living human being knows. Good Luck.

    Maybe I should ask Doug or Bob then.


    .

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